14 ms·

PayPal shuttering its San Francisco office

52 points by nimbius 5y ago

legitster 5y ago
I think cities might be in for a huge reckoning. Most downtowns I have visited in the last year have been dire. Nothing's open, homeless everywhere, graffiti and smashed windows. So many urban cores relied on a daily influx of white collar workers - not just their money, but even their physical presence. Places that used to be packed with rush hour commuters now have tent sites. Public transit have lost their critical mass of people that make you feel comfortable taking public transit. And it's hard to imagine there is a post-covid switch that someone will flip that will make cities "cool" again.
- rpmisms 5y ago
  Head down south. Knoxville is lovely, Nashville is booming. Atlanta is... Atlanta.
  - legitster 5y ago
    True, this could specifically be a West coast thing.
    - rpmisms 5y ago
      I'm east coast for life, and the West Coast confuses me. If you do move to one of the lovely cities in Dixie, please don't vote or push for cultural changes until you're integrated.
      - vineyardmike 5y ago
        Or do vote how you want. Your culture is as valid as the inhabitants. Act like Americans do and drive out the locals. Be the pilgrims.
        rpmisms 5y ago
        Would you make this same argument for Americans moving en masse to a small country with a rich heritage, and promptly trying to erase it? It happened in the past, doesn't make it right.
        vineyardmike 5y ago
        My comment was a bit tongue in check, where no people shouldn’t act like Americans did. BUT you shouldn’t have to integrate with “Dixie” culture, and bringing your culture with you (and exercising your right to vote) is not wrong. Americans didn’t just “bring their culture”, of course, they slaughtered locals and enslaved them and destroyed their lives. Voting against gun violence or against Christian-centric moral laws is NOT doing the same thing to “Dixie” as American colonists did to the earlier inhabitants, and is -i would say- still respectful.
        rpmisms 5y ago
        > bringing your culture with you [...] is not wrong. Is if it sucks, and has demonstrably ruined other cities.
        vineyardmike 5y ago
        Demonstrably, American south was already pretty ruined by that metric. Lots of people don’t feel safe being in most of those places alone, lots of them feel their voice isnt heard or respected, and there’s rampant discrimination. But seriously, “demonstrably ruined” is a very one note take and not really useful. People deserve to have their culture respected and it’s totally fine to take it with you. That’s the whole point of American individualism. It wasn’t supposed to be about guns and group think it was supposed to be self determination and the freedom to make your own path. People come to America for freedom, not because they want to conform. When’d we lose that?
        rpmisms 5y ago
        > Lots of people don’t feel safe being in most of those places alone, lots of them feel their voice isnt heard or respected, and there’s rampant discrimination. That sounds like most cities.
      - m0llusk 5y ago
        This idea that people voted for what the West Coast became makes no sense. There were always many issues in flux and various camps involved. Ronald Reagan lay the foundation for what is there today. And many of the disgusting wash outs that accumulate in the gutters fled from conservative parts of the South and Midwest when the mills and small manufacturing got outsourced. Take some responsibility for your refugees mister careful with cultural changes integration master.
  - silicon2401 5y ago
    > Head down south. Knoxville is lovely, Nashville is booming. Atlanta is... Atlanta. I personally wish people wouldn't say stuff like this. The reason urban places are terrible is because of the people and attitudes there. As soon as they move somewhere else, they're just going to ruin that place with regressive policies and idealistic goals too.
    - rpmisms 5y ago
      I'm moving near Knoxville for family reasons, and I'll be voting properly, to not ruin the area. I also fully intend to buy the most annoying truck possible, doing my part to keep Cali refugees from finding it desirable. I do know people who moved to the area from California, but they fit in wonderfully and think it's great when the 8-year-old grabs the Henry to go squirrel hunting. Edit: By keeping busibodies who can't mind their own business out of the area, I will be adding value. I'll still take the Tesla on road trips, don't worry.
      - yhoneycomb 5y ago
        Willing to bet that the kind of person who holds views like the commenter above also harbors racist views > I do know people who moved to the area from California, but they fit in wonderfully ie, white?
        rpmisms 5y ago
        No, actually. I'm talking about people who move to an area wanting to change it, in my experience typically (but not always) rich, white, never gone hunting, that sort. This is completely ideological, not racial. If you want to correlate those two, that's on you.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    Knoxville is still nice, Nashville is already ruined by progressive policies. Homeless pissing on the sidewalk in broad daylight, hassling people as you walk out of buildings, etc. I wish people that moved to places like Nashville and Austin would rethink who and what they vote for.
    - JaimeThompson 5y ago
      >progressive policies. What are progressive policies?
      - rpmisms 5y ago
        Cash free bail, hard drugs being decriminalized, anti-gun/anti-personal-protection laws.
        hunterb123 5y ago
        Yeah, that about sums it up.
        x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
        So those problems didn't exist during the "tough-on-crime" era?
        JaimeThompson 5y ago
        Other countries have decriminalized hard drugs without drastic increases in crime, haven't they? What anti-gun/anti-personal-protection laws are you referring to?
        rpmisms 5y ago
        Other countries have very different problems than the US. I don't think that's controversial. Try getting a gun legally in NYC. It's next to impossible. I can carry in downtown Nashville, no problem. You'd be a lot less likely to carjack someone if you thought they might have a gun, right?
  - gregors 4y ago
    Living in Knoxville and loving it! Chattanooga is also great! * Great Smoky Mountains National Park nearby * Municipal internet being worked on in Knoxville, already running in Chattanooga * University of Tennessee * Oak Ridge National Lab - 2nd fastest supercomputer * Elixir, Golang, Rust, Clojure if you know where to look https://www.kub.org/about/about-kub/kub-service-areas/century-ii/meter-modernization/broadband-services-public-forum https://www.kub.org/about/about-kub/kub-service-areas/centur... https://epb.com/fi-speed-internet/ https://epb.com/fi-speed-internet/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summit_(supercomputer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summit_(supercomputer)
- Overtonwindow 5y ago
  I think this comes in waves. Cities create tension between different classes of people. Rich and poor, eventually the grind becomes enough that flight occurs, to the suburbs. Then after a period of time, the urban gets a revitalization and those same people who left move back in. It goes back-and-forth.
  - legitster 5y ago
    I'm not sure if this is the same thing. The move to the suburbs still largely tied people to jobs in downtown. If work from home becomes the new normal, what happens if major cities lose the entirely of their middle class?
    - vineyardmike 5y ago
      Then it becomes cheaper, and the middle class can afford to come back. People like living in dense areas near other people. Walkability, a multitude of restaurants and cultural institutions, etc. Unfortunately there is a limited amount of it so the rich take it, and the middle class struggle, and it becomes undesirable, and cheap then the middle class can move back. Repeat.
- infamouscow 5y ago
  > I think cities might be in for a huge reckoning. Most downtowns I have visited in the last year have been dire. Nothing's open, homeless everywhere, graffiti and smashed windows. Austin, Nashville, and Miami are booming.
- xyzzy21 5y ago
  Absolutely true. I worked and lived in the SF Bay Area for nearly 30 years and I grew up in Marin. I left in 2016 and now own land in a rural area back East. I'm building my dream/retirement/Jeff Tracey Thunderbirds house and will never return to California. I still have most of my family in the SF Bay Area but they are going to end up "holding the bag" and lose out if they wait too long. My brother who has a house in Noe Valley worries me the most but I can't save him from himself. I realized about a decade ago I could never retire in California due to the costs regardless of retirement investment. I also realized that what made Silicon Valley work politically, economically and intellectually is now 100% gone thanks to Woke. I actually like urban cities. But I've lived in cities that ACTUALLY WORK - Taipei, Singapore, Tokyo, etc. And NO CITY in the USA will ever attain even 1/10th of what these cities achieve in terms of livability and cost - we don't have the cultural or national stamina to do what it would take (and NO green energy is not the answer). I've had hope in the past but clearly it's never going to happen. And that won't change in my remaining lifetime (based on my grandparents' lifespans, I've got as much as 30 more years). If you've ever lived in "real cities" like these in Asia or Europe, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't, you need to travel and experience it. Honestly it's a lot like meeting woman overseas - you discover what you thought was normal absolutely is NOT nor remotely necessary. The lower cost of where I live now has enabled me to make all the capital investments for my next companies (I've cofounded 4 since 2000 - all SW & HW based). Having the R&D "done/validated" before we talk to money means we keep far more ownership and are closer to release to market with time-to-market advantages. This is completely impossible in California or NYC now. Doing this is pretty marginal in AZ or TX or OR or WA but sometimes doable in certain niches fields. It's a slam dunk if you have far lower operating and living costs. Everything is changing - all the places you could MINDLESSLY assume would be good never will be again. A very useful historical analogy: between 1920 and 1960, the "electronics industry" (including the 1920s Radio Boom which was analogous in growth to all the booms in Silicon Valley over the last 50 years) were all centered in the NYC tristate area. And then it was all gone - when it all moved to Silicon Valley and other western states. Nothing is permanent. And this type of migration is currently in progress right now. Again. But California is the "overpriced, antibusiness" location everyone is fleeing from. Just as in the 1950s-1960s, it wasn't necessarily clear where the new "hotspot(s)" would be. A lot of people were also sure that NYC would remain the center of electronics just as many people think California will always be the place for "Tech". They were wrong. The weather is not enough to keep people!
- itslennysfault 5y ago
  > Most downtowns ... on the west coast. I did a cross-country road trip a few months ago (the longest way possible, down the coast and across the south and then back up) from Seattle to Chicago. Seattle is a total mess as you described. SF too. As I headed east everything seemed pretty normal. St Louis seemed the same as it's ever been. Chicago too.
  - bobkazamakis 5y ago
    >... on the west coast. Yeah, because the homeless in the east turn into hypothermia cases.
    - cafard 5y ago
      You don't have to look far in Washington, DC, to see tents set up by the homeless.
  - waych 5y ago
    You don't even have to go that far. Seattle continues to be dead just about every night of the week, compared to the before times. Head north 15 miles to Lynnwood in the next county over however, and things have continued to remain really vibrant and busy. I'm talking about the difference of a restaurant having a few tables seated, vs being full and having to wait. Several differences in policy stand out to me: vax passes, antifa, and the homeless.
    - kmos17 5y ago
      We’ve had all three in NYC (depending on what you mean by antifa since outside of Seattle it’s mostly a non-existant scarecrow of right wing talking heads) and things are booming. Homelessness is pretty bad and crime has climbed, but we’re very far from the 80’s and 90’s, and the city is very alive with restaurants thriving. That said the changes due to work from home are far more devastating than anything else to specific Manhattan neighborhoods that relied on large workday populations that have yet to return, so I wouldn’t say it’s all roses.
- clpm4j 5y ago
  Convert office buildings into mixed-use residential and retail. Cities are still a lot cooler than the suburbs.
  - m0llusk 5y ago
    This is only going to happen in the longer term if at all because the construction standards and rents for commercial buildings are so much higher. Most likely is that alternative commercial concerns find uses for these spaces at least in the short to medium term. It is also the case that a lot of manufacturing, light industry, fashion, and other such got pushed out by tech over time and could potentially move back in.
  - ttyp3 5y ago
    Retail's not in great shape, either.
  - ricardobayes 5y ago
    London has done this by converting (in some cases, knocking down) industrial buildings into lofts, boutique hotels and co-working/co-living places.
- ss108 5y ago
  New York is doing pretty solid, IMO. SF seems uniquely bad.
andjd 5y ago
> An individual who commented on a post on the topic on the anonymous professional network, Blind, speculated that the reason behind the move could be San Francisco’s Prop C, which levied a tax upon any San Francisco business that earns more than $50 million in gross receipts. That's lazy journalism. Given that this was the office space of a company they acquired, it could just as easily be that they're consolidating operations, or that the workers there preferred working remotely during the pandemic. Reporting on anonymous speculation doesn't make it any less speculative. This makes it look like TechCrunch has more of a political desire to attack taxes than to report on verifiable facts.
- diebeforei485 5y ago
  It's not attacking "taxes". It's specifically pointing out the flaws in a gross receipts tax system. It affects companies with large receipts but low margins (mostly fintech companies, which is why Stripe and Square also leaving).
  - ricardobayes 5y ago
    Taxing revenue? Yikes. Way to kill off a startup hub.
hogrider 5y ago
People can fo math. No one will take the pay cut it means to commute every day to an office if remote jobs are available. No one cares about the investors real estate depreciation.

52 points by nimbius 5y ago

I think cities might be in for a huge reckoning. Most downtowns I have visited in the last year have been dire. Nothing's open, homeless everywhere, graffiti and smashed windows. So many urban cores relied on a daily influx of white collar workers - not just their money, but even their physical presence. Places that used to be packed with rush hour commuters now have tent sites. Public transit have lost their critical mass of people that make you feel comfortable taking public transit. And it's hard to imagine there is a post-covid switch that someone will flip that will make cities "cool" again.

rpmisms 5y ago
Head down south. Knoxville is lovely, Nashville is booming. Atlanta is... Atlanta.
- legitster 5y ago
  True, this could specifically be a West coast thing.
  - rpmisms 5y ago
    I'm east coast for life, and the West Coast confuses me. If you do move to one of the lovely cities in Dixie, please don't vote or push for cultural changes until you're integrated.
    - vineyardmike 5y ago
      Or do vote how you want. Your culture is as valid as the inhabitants. Act like Americans do and drive out the locals. Be the pilgrims.
      - rpmisms 5y ago
        Would you make this same argument for Americans moving en masse to a small country with a rich heritage, and promptly trying to erase it? It happened in the past, doesn't make it right.
        vineyardmike 5y ago
        My comment was a bit tongue in check, where no people shouldn’t act like Americans did. BUT you shouldn’t have to integrate with “Dixie” culture, and bringing your culture with you (and exercising your right to vote) is not wrong. Americans didn’t just “bring their culture”, of course, they slaughtered locals and enslaved them and destroyed their lives. Voting against gun violence or against Christian-centric moral laws is NOT doing the same thing to “Dixie” as American colonists did to the earlier inhabitants, and is -i would say- still respectful.
        rpmisms 5y ago
        > bringing your culture with you [...] is not wrong. Is if it sucks, and has demonstrably ruined other cities.
        vineyardmike 5y ago
        Demonstrably, American south was already pretty ruined by that metric. Lots of people don’t feel safe being in most of those places alone, lots of them feel their voice isnt heard or respected, and there’s rampant discrimination. But seriously, “demonstrably ruined” is a very one note take and not really useful. People deserve to have their culture respected and it’s totally fine to take it with you. That’s the whole point of American individualism. It wasn’t supposed to be about guns and group think it was supposed to be self determination and the freedom to make your own path. People come to America for freedom, not because they want to conform. When’d we lose that?
        rpmisms 5y ago
        > Lots of people don’t feel safe being in most of those places alone, lots of them feel their voice isnt heard or respected, and there’s rampant discrimination. That sounds like most cities.
    - m0llusk 5y ago
      This idea that people voted for what the West Coast became makes no sense. There were always many issues in flux and various camps involved. Ronald Reagan lay the foundation for what is there today. And many of the disgusting wash outs that accumulate in the gutters fled from conservative parts of the South and Midwest when the mills and small manufacturing got outsourced. Take some responsibility for your refugees mister careful with cultural changes integration master.
- silicon2401 5y ago
  > Head down south. Knoxville is lovely, Nashville is booming. Atlanta is... Atlanta. I personally wish people wouldn't say stuff like this. The reason urban places are terrible is because of the people and attitudes there. As soon as they move somewhere else, they're just going to ruin that place with regressive policies and idealistic goals too.
  - rpmisms 5y ago
    I'm moving near Knoxville for family reasons, and I'll be voting properly, to not ruin the area. I also fully intend to buy the most annoying truck possible, doing my part to keep Cali refugees from finding it desirable. I do know people who moved to the area from California, but they fit in wonderfully and think it's great when the 8-year-old grabs the Henry to go squirrel hunting. Edit: By keeping busibodies who can't mind their own business out of the area, I will be adding value. I'll still take the Tesla on road trips, don't worry.
    - yhoneycomb 5y ago
      Willing to bet that the kind of person who holds views like the commenter above also harbors racist views > I do know people who moved to the area from California, but they fit in wonderfully ie, white?
      - rpmisms 5y ago
        No, actually. I'm talking about people who move to an area wanting to change it, in my experience typically (but not always) rich, white, never gone hunting, that sort. This is completely ideological, not racial. If you want to correlate those two, that's on you.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  Knoxville is still nice, Nashville is already ruined by progressive policies. Homeless pissing on the sidewalk in broad daylight, hassling people as you walk out of buildings, etc. I wish people that moved to places like Nashville and Austin would rethink who and what they vote for.
  - JaimeThompson 5y ago
    >progressive policies. What are progressive policies?
    - rpmisms 5y ago
      Cash free bail, hard drugs being decriminalized, anti-gun/anti-personal-protection laws.
      - hunterb123 5y ago
        Yeah, that about sums it up.
      - x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
        So those problems didn't exist during the "tough-on-crime" era?
      - JaimeThompson 5y ago
        Other countries have decriminalized hard drugs without drastic increases in crime, haven't they? What anti-gun/anti-personal-protection laws are you referring to?
        rpmisms 5y ago
        Other countries have very different problems than the US. I don't think that's controversial. Try getting a gun legally in NYC. It's next to impossible. I can carry in downtown Nashville, no problem. You'd be a lot less likely to carjack someone if you thought they might have a gun, right?
- gregors 4y ago
  Living in Knoxville and loving it! Chattanooga is also great! * Great Smoky Mountains National Park nearby * Municipal internet being worked on in Knoxville, already running in Chattanooga * University of Tennessee * Oak Ridge National Lab - 2nd fastest supercomputer * Elixir, Golang, Rust, Clojure if you know where to look https://www.kub.org/about/about-kub/kub-service-areas/century-ii/meter-modernization/broadband-services-public-forum https://www.kub.org/about/about-kub/kub-service-areas/centur... https://epb.com/fi-speed-internet/ https://epb.com/fi-speed-internet/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summit_(supercomputer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summit_(supercomputer)
Overtonwindow 5y ago
I think this comes in waves. Cities create tension between different classes of people. Rich and poor, eventually the grind becomes enough that flight occurs, to the suburbs. Then after a period of time, the urban gets a revitalization and those same people who left move back in. It goes back-and-forth.
- legitster 5y ago
  I'm not sure if this is the same thing. The move to the suburbs still largely tied people to jobs in downtown. If work from home becomes the new normal, what happens if major cities lose the entirely of their middle class?
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    Then it becomes cheaper, and the middle class can afford to come back. People like living in dense areas near other people. Walkability, a multitude of restaurants and cultural institutions, etc. Unfortunately there is a limited amount of it so the rich take it, and the middle class struggle, and it becomes undesirable, and cheap then the middle class can move back. Repeat.
infamouscow 5y ago
> I think cities might be in for a huge reckoning. Most downtowns I have visited in the last year have been dire. Nothing's open, homeless everywhere, graffiti and smashed windows. Austin, Nashville, and Miami are booming.
xyzzy21 5y ago
Absolutely true. I worked and lived in the SF Bay Area for nearly 30 years and I grew up in Marin. I left in 2016 and now own land in a rural area back East. I'm building my dream/retirement/Jeff Tracey Thunderbirds house and will never return to California. I still have most of my family in the SF Bay Area but they are going to end up "holding the bag" and lose out if they wait too long. My brother who has a house in Noe Valley worries me the most but I can't save him from himself. I realized about a decade ago I could never retire in California due to the costs regardless of retirement investment. I also realized that what made Silicon Valley work politically, economically and intellectually is now 100% gone thanks to Woke. I actually like urban cities. But I've lived in cities that ACTUALLY WORK - Taipei, Singapore, Tokyo, etc. And NO CITY in the USA will ever attain even 1/10th of what these cities achieve in terms of livability and cost - we don't have the cultural or national stamina to do what it would take (and NO green energy is not the answer). I've had hope in the past but clearly it's never going to happen. And that won't change in my remaining lifetime (based on my grandparents' lifespans, I've got as much as 30 more years). If you've ever lived in "real cities" like these in Asia or Europe, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't, you need to travel and experience it. Honestly it's a lot like meeting woman overseas - you discover what you thought was normal absolutely is NOT nor remotely necessary. The lower cost of where I live now has enabled me to make all the capital investments for my next companies (I've cofounded 4 since 2000 - all SW & HW based). Having the R&D "done/validated" before we talk to money means we keep far more ownership and are closer to release to market with time-to-market advantages. This is completely impossible in California or NYC now. Doing this is pretty marginal in AZ or TX or OR or WA but sometimes doable in certain niches fields. It's a slam dunk if you have far lower operating and living costs. Everything is changing - all the places you could MINDLESSLY assume would be good never will be again. A very useful historical analogy: between 1920 and 1960, the "electronics industry" (including the 1920s Radio Boom which was analogous in growth to all the booms in Silicon Valley over the last 50 years) were all centered in the NYC tristate area. And then it was all gone - when it all moved to Silicon Valley and other western states. Nothing is permanent. And this type of migration is currently in progress right now. Again. But California is the "overpriced, antibusiness" location everyone is fleeing from. Just as in the 1950s-1960s, it wasn't necessarily clear where the new "hotspot(s)" would be. A lot of people were also sure that NYC would remain the center of electronics just as many people think California will always be the place for "Tech". They were wrong. The weather is not enough to keep people!
itslennysfault 5y ago
> Most downtowns ... on the west coast. I did a cross-country road trip a few months ago (the longest way possible, down the coast and across the south and then back up) from Seattle to Chicago. Seattle is a total mess as you described. SF too. As I headed east everything seemed pretty normal. St Louis seemed the same as it's ever been. Chicago too.
- bobkazamakis 5y ago
  >... on the west coast. Yeah, because the homeless in the east turn into hypothermia cases.
  - cafard 5y ago
    You don't have to look far in Washington, DC, to see tents set up by the homeless.
- waych 5y ago
  You don't even have to go that far. Seattle continues to be dead just about every night of the week, compared to the before times. Head north 15 miles to Lynnwood in the next county over however, and things have continued to remain really vibrant and busy. I'm talking about the difference of a restaurant having a few tables seated, vs being full and having to wait. Several differences in policy stand out to me: vax passes, antifa, and the homeless.
  - kmos17 5y ago
    We’ve had all three in NYC (depending on what you mean by antifa since outside of Seattle it’s mostly a non-existant scarecrow of right wing talking heads) and things are booming. Homelessness is pretty bad and crime has climbed, but we’re very far from the 80’s and 90’s, and the city is very alive with restaurants thriving. That said the changes due to work from home are far more devastating than anything else to specific Manhattan neighborhoods that relied on large workday populations that have yet to return, so I wouldn’t say it’s all roses.
clpm4j 5y ago
Convert office buildings into mixed-use residential and retail. Cities are still a lot cooler than the suburbs.
- m0llusk 5y ago
  This is only going to happen in the longer term if at all because the construction standards and rents for commercial buildings are so much higher. Most likely is that alternative commercial concerns find uses for these spaces at least in the short to medium term. It is also the case that a lot of manufacturing, light industry, fashion, and other such got pushed out by tech over time and could potentially move back in.
- ttyp3 5y ago
  Retail's not in great shape, either.
- ricardobayes 5y ago
  London has done this by converting (in some cases, knocking down) industrial buildings into lofts, boutique hotels and co-working/co-living places.
ss108 5y ago
New York is doing pretty solid, IMO. SF seems uniquely bad.

andjd 5y ago

> An individual who commented on a post on the topic on the anonymous professional network, Blind, speculated that the reason behind the move could be San Francisco’s Prop C, which levied a tax upon any San Francisco business that earns more than $50 million in gross receipts. That's lazy journalism. Given that this was the office space of a company they acquired, it could just as easily be that they're consolidating operations, or that the workers there preferred working remotely during the pandemic. Reporting on anonymous speculation doesn't make it any less speculative. This makes it look like TechCrunch has more of a political desire to attack taxes than to report on verifiable facts.

diebeforei485 5y ago
It's not attacking "taxes". It's specifically pointing out the flaws in a gross receipts tax system. It affects companies with large receipts but low margins (mostly fintech companies, which is why Stripe and Square also leaving).
- ricardobayes 5y ago
  Taxing revenue? Yikes. Way to kill off a startup hub.

hogrider 5y ago

People can fo math. No one will take the pay cut it means to commute every day to an office if remote jobs are available. No one cares about the investors real estate depreciation.